Going back to the problem we experienced when Campbell Wardlaw assisted from his hospital bed.
At the time we had two Dodge 13 ton GVW luton vans RTY5G and RTY6G. We had bought them when they were about 1 year old from Ridley’s of Allendale who were going onto artics.
One of them had brake failure going down Crawley side Bank and was stopped by the sand in the suicide lane.
The police arrived and called out the Ministry of Transport inspectors who arranged through us for the vehicle to be taken into North Eastern Motors who were the Dodge agents so they could carry out a detailed inspection of the vehicle.
On examination they could find no defects but as the brakes had failed we were charged with defective brakes, which is an absolute offence with no possible defence.
We got the van back and checked it out and the brakes were working perfectly. Whilst we were waiting for the case to go to court, Eddy Thornton who was at that time working in our transport office by sheer ■■■■■ found out the problem.
We carried out monthly inspection and servicing of vehicles on a night shift with three fitters attending to six vehicles per night. Their responsibility was to service and inspect and carry out any minor defects leaving anything major to be dealt with by the following day’s day shift.
Eddie Thornton had been down in the workshops, about 5.PM getting the day shift cleaned up in the two bays used by the night shift and was watching RTY5G being pulled over one of the pits ready for the start of the night shift, who worked 7-00PM to 7-00AM. As the van stopped he heard a sissing noise of air escaping and going down the pit he identified a component in the breaking system where the leak was coming from. It was a sealed unit that had an intermittent leak. So really we couldn’t in any way find it in any maintenance system.
Campbell Wardlaw’s secretary rang dad and said that as he was in hospital and wanted to discuss the case in preparation for the court hearing could dad meet her at the RVI in Newcastle and she would take dad into the hospital. Campbell Wardlaw was in bed, where he had still been working and had an assistant solicitor by his side when dad and his secretary entered. Explaining that it was an absolute offence and a non-guilty plea was not an option, and understanding that a guilty verdict could prejudice any future licence applications he said the only option was to mitigate and get an absolute discharge. He then proceeded in dictating word for word what his colleague had to say in mitigation to the magistrates, which in fact he did and we were granted an absolute discharge.
I think Campbell Wardlaw died within two weeks and when we had an unfair dismissal come up about a month later, Arnott, Dodds and Wardlaw, his former company had a locum solicitor dealing with it on our behalf. How I wished he had survived long enough to deal with that on our behalf as we lost miserably and most certainly would not have done so had Cambell Wardlaw have represented us.
Campbell Wardlaw was replaced by a solicitor called Heard, who in fairness was quite good and effective in court. I remember he had a long beard and drove round to and from courts with an old Rover P4 which although immaculate condition looked quite ancient on the road but suited his eccentric character. No doubt by now he has retired. Here I a photo of RTY 5G.
Going back to the story I was telling where we had wrongly been advised to form, at great expense and trouble to turn our business into a partnership, and the subsequent advice dad was given by Campbell Wardlaw, two years down the line we formed our new limited company.
With my knowledge today, I now know I can form and open a perfectly legal company for £25.00, in my youth it was knowledge that I had yet to gain. So we instructed Joe hall, our solicitor to form a limited company and he charged several thousand pound to do so.
The biggest change, and possibly one of the best was that our accountant had sold out and was being retained as a consultant and introduced us to the new partner, a young Michael Chipchase of the new company, Allen Sykes & Company, incorporating Dunn, Monk and Co.
Michael Chipchase being young had a very modern attitude of life, however still an accountant at heart, telling me that on the birth of his twin daughters he had taken out insurance to cover their eventual wedding costs.
Until we stopped training Michael handled our accounts, and after about a couple of years suggested we employed our own accountant, and in fact assisted dad and myself in interviewing for the job, so he could concentrate on auditing our accounts. By skilful manipulating the ordering and subsequent purchase of capital expenditure we never paid one penny corporation tax during those years.
When I read and hear stories of companies today avoiding paying corporation tax, I cannot help laugh as we did the same all those years ago. What we did was legal and good business, and however we did employ a lot of people generating PAYE and NI payments to the exchequer and an awful lot of VAT. And it certainly made up for the time that dad had been paying 19/6 in the pound income tax.
As I explained in the last post Michael Chipchase of Allen Sykes & Co advised us to employ our first accountant about 1977. He in fact dealt with applications on our behalf and after reducing down to three candidates attended with dad and myself when we conducted the interviews.
Our choice for the post was Bob Weatherall, and looking back after all these years, I think it would be hard to have come up with a better choice. A new office was built within the accounts office and Bob immediately settled in.
Being in business was once described to me of walking up a very steep set of stairs and struggling until you reach a landing. Once you get your breath back off you go again up another steep set of stairs. I think at this stage we had reached a landing. It certainly took away a lot of work that I had been doing, as Bob’s other responsibility was office manager and although I was still ultimately responsible for the office staff, Bob dealt with day to day matters and work allocation between the staff. However the luxury of a little less work didn’t last long as my work load soon increased again in other areas.
Bob produced monthly profit and loss accounts, and of course end of year profit and loss and balance sheet, when one of Allen Sykes’ staff came in for a week and carried out an audit for them to prepare the final annual accounts, and soon got things moving into a more organised direction. It’s only now when I look back, I begin to realise we should have made better use of him, and his talents whilst he was there particularly involving him in costing and rate negotiating with our customers which I still kept to myself. If I had my time to live again I would have made him a director of the company and given him a company car, but back then in the seventies dad and I would never have considered such a thing. In the event Bob left us and moved on to Ladbrokes and was appointed as senior accountant in their Hotel division.
Dad was as I have said before of the opinion that Office staff and premises were a waste of money. He also was an extremely hard worker, and expected the same from me. The problem with this is that I was fully absorbed into the day to day running of the business with complete continuity of work throughout the day. The only time of day that Dad and I had any time to discuss things was during our daily breakfast together at about 9-30 when the morning had started and the day’s events were just starting to form. We talked to the various members of staff but never together. So there was never a chance of an exchange of views about the various aspects of the business. Dad talked to the drivers on an hourly basis as they shared coffee and cigarettes in the driver’s rest room, but we had so many other parts of the business going off in tangents and although we had total dictator style control, but a regular meeting of the various parts of the business would certainly have had an overall benefit.
Also my advice to anyone who finds themselves in a position like me is don’t get bogged down in day to day work, take a step back and look over the total situation, and give others chances to develop themselves without micro control, but had I tried to do that dad would have regarded me as idle and lazy. It was just the way he had been brought up in the thirties by my grandfather, but times change, and no doubt have long changed since we finished.
hiya,
Still looking in on a daily basis Carl and finding your writings just as
interesting as I found them on your page one, keep it up my friend.
thanks harry, long retired.
harry_gill:
hiya,
Still looking in on a daily basis Carl and finding your writings just as
interesting as I found them on your page one, keep it up my friend.
thanks harry, long retired.
Hi harry
Pleased to hear you are still reading. Hope you are well. Its nice to have a little feedback because at times when I have received non for a while I begin to think I am speaking to myself
Going back to 1965 I explained that old Bedford petrol SB passenger chassis pantechnicon HTH 882 was brought back out of retirement and put on a temporary A licence over the 65-66 Christmas period. True to our recent form we applied and were successful in making this an extra A licenced vehicle in January 1966.
I have explained how we bought the Morris J2 NPT719D was registered that year and we added a further three Bedford SB diesel Marsden’s.
MPT692D was the first that replaced and finally put HTH882 into pastures new. Don Clegg from Stanley bought it to add to his increasing collection of old furniture vans.
RPT440D came along later that year and was put on a contract A Licence for New Equipment Ltd of Croxdale (Steel Style Furniture), NESS Furniture as it is today. . In those days if you had a contract with a manufacturer you could obtain a Contract A Licence over the counter, just the same as an own account operator could get a C licence. However we, as everyone else were restricted that we were only allowed to carry the goods of the company who we had the contract with, which often proved a non-ideal situation when the van was from time to time unoccupied for a day and we could well and truly use it elsewhere. So within about 8 months we had applied for the van to be added to our ever enlarging A licence, which fortunately was granted.
RPT440D was unique in another area in so much as it was the first van that we had Marsden’s paint, be it in New Equipment Steel Style livery. Previous to that van all had been delivered in grey primer and we had ourselves painted.
The final van of the year was BSO172C seen below, which arrived at the year end. It had been new one year earlier to Fyffes of Forres, who were a few years later taken over by White & Co. I will for ever remember BSO as Fyffes had Marsden’s put aluminium curved moulding on the van to suit their livery, and this had to come off and the rivet holes filled to make it match the others in our fleet. The paint then left a ridge that was unacceptable so we decided to resolve the problem of taking it back down to aluminium with the aid of Nitramors paint remover. Then start again with grey primer up to the final panting and lettering.
Normal rubbing down with wet and dry was a bad enough task but getting all the paint off and the paint remover out of the moulding, which I had the pleasure of doing was a mammoth task. Then the paint remover had to be neutralised with chemicals to ensure it did not react with the new to be applied paint. Saying the least it was the last time we attempted this task, but as the photo below shows it paid off as BSO identically matched our other vans.
6188HN the Bedford TK 4 cylinder diesel had been such a dreadful vehicle that we bit the bullet and lost a lot of money and sold it to Fred Johnson & Sons the long established Durham removal contractors and early 1967 BSO172 C went on the road to replace this TK on the A licence.
kennyjohnson:
Hl Carl
I came across this add. in a Bishop Auckland operatic program dated 27th october 1979, thought it might be of interest.
Regards Ken
Hi kenny,
Thank you for sharing that old advert from 1979. The van was EUP488G a Bedford KF with Marsden Integral pantecnicon bodywork. EUP was built to TIR specification for overseas work and if you look closely at left hand side of cab above drivers side headlights the TIR plate is visible. Way back in 1969 when EUP was new if you wanted a copy of a van for printing purposes a copper plate had to be made which was expensive, unlike today when you can simply scan and copy. We paid for the copper plate and obviously were still using it 10 years later whe EUP488G was quite long in the tooth. The plate and image was used in many adverts over the years and in 1979, although we had many newer vans with more modern images, it still was being promoted.
Going back to 1966 and BSO172C. As I explained we bought this van second hand at a considerably less cost than new. There also was the time factor as it was taking over six months those days from the date of order, to the finished vehicle being collected from Marsden’s at Warrington. I can safely say that over its time with us BSO earned as much and cost no more on maintenance than the other two new Bedfords we added that year.
Years after, dad and I were having a discussion about a planned replacement of the older vehicles in the fleet and dad said not to worry as we could buy some second hand. I was a little annoyed by this as I thought, as by that time we had approaching a hundred vehicle fleet and possibly the largest of its kind in the country, that we should only be considering new vehicles.
‘Don’t forget that I have over the years made more money out of second hand vehicles, that ever I did new ones’ Dad responded.
Certainly up to 1975 we had never used finance or leasing to purchase anything we had and always paid cash, buying only when we had the funds to do so. Dad always commented that two regrets were that because at the time he couldn’t afford to purchase two vehicles and he always wished he had done so.
The first was way back to 1955 when he bought, what turned out to be our first ever Marsden, a petrol SB integral pantechnicon CDJ. It had been built new by a company Crosby Springs of Liverpool. Apparently they mad the springs that were used in spring interior mattresses. At the time he bought it they had an identical sister vehicle which was up for sale and at the time he hadn’t plenty of cash to buy it as well. CDJ was always his favourite van until the day he died, describing it, with its petrol engine as a dream to drive. On another thread I read where someone described never having driven a Bedford S model, until later in life and remarking how it was just like driving a car. Well that was certainly the case, and for anyone who criticised Bedford vehicles, I honestly think they have never driven or operated them.
The second regret, were at the time he hadn’t the cash to make a second purchase was with BSO172C, as Fyffe’s of Forres also had a sister vehicle up for sale a month after we bought ours. Mind, anyone who saw BSO pull into our garage in Marmaduke Street on the day it was bought in Fyffe’s livery with rounded aluminium moulding, would never have thought it would emerge as an identical vehicle as other similar vehicles in our fleet.
Here is a photo showing one of Fyffe’s vans in their livery
hiya,
Carl I taught myself (with a bit of instruction from the off road shunter),
the art of driving articulated vehicles using a Bedford S type this would be
the late 50s having only driven mainly eight wheeler’s with and without a
drawbar trailer it took me about half an hour to become “qualified” and I
set off for Enfield the same day with the “S” type which became my motor
until I re-joined the BRS and became a "wag and drag man again.
thanks harry, long retired.
Thinking back I never had the pleasure of driving any of our petrol SB’s or the O models before as I was not old enough and they had long gone when I would have been able to do so. However I drove the two 1937 and 1938s and in reality even for their age they were very easy and fast. (Cruise at 50mph).
One memory that stuck in my mind was on one Saturday morning driving BUP312F a Marsden Bedford KF integral and by then quite old from Smart & Brown loaded to our Green and Depot, and then going back and bringing RPT601M, a then quite young Seddon Pennine with Vanplan integral pantechnicon body, and finding I had to work a lot harder with the Seddon, as the road holding was by no means as good as the Bedford. I then realised why drivers wanted to stick to the Bedford integrals.
For the first 55 years or so of our business we were based at 14 Marmaduke Street Spennymoor. It had been the home of my great grandfather and the birthplace of my grandfather (and father) and my grandfather in fact lived all his life at that house.
Spennymoor had been formed to accommodate the influx of miners, mostly from Wales who flooded into the area during the late 1880s. Many streets of back to back terraced houses were built, but the blocks, the area which took in Marmaduke Street and the adjacent streets were different, as most houses were semi-detached with huge gardens at the side right in the middle of the town. At one time we had 5 properties in the blocks, as well as no 14 which had the garage standing on the former garden, no 12 with most of the former garden used for parking no.16 used as the office. As well we had two properties in Brian Street (The next street) one of which had been the original home of the Edwards fruit and vegetable family and still had the remains of their original wooden garage built on the garden, were they had garaged their original vehicles as well as the Mayqueen bus operated in about 1918. Al the properties with the exception of number 14 had been bought mainly for their gardens and the possible possibility of potential additional parking space as the business expanded, but with the exception of the two small developments and use of part of no 12 and 16, all had been stopped by the local authority’s planning department.
The reason the bocks had been built the way they were, I do not know. However they clearly provided a better standard of accommodation from that provided to the average miner who lived in the back to back terraces that made up the biggest part of original Spennymoor properties. That is supported by the number of small businesses that sprang up over the years in Marmaduke Street alone. In motor transport alone apart from us in the middle of the street. At the bottom of the Street was Oughton Carriers, run originally by Barry Hindmarch’s father and later Barry who has often contributed to this thread. At the top of the street was E Howe who operated as OK Motor Services.
Eddy Howe had started his business about 1926, running a bus service from Bishop Auckland to Newcastle, and when ‘The Great Exhibition’ came to Newcastle passenger numbers boomed. Unable to keep up the demands he formed an agreement with Wayne Emerson of Bishop Auckland where running as separate businesses they ran the OK services between them, maintaining a bus each way every hour from 7-00am till 11.pm. This service required from each of the 2 busses one week with two extra for duplicate and one bus, with one duplicate the next week. Over the years the OK service was a gold mine and made Howe’s a lot of money.
Originally Howe’s ran Rio busses but soon settled into AEC which proved to be reliable without exception. Until the last four years when Eddy was obviously preparing to retire he ran 100% AEC fleet, made up of 2 service busses, 2 semi coaches and 2 coaches. As the service was so lucrative the coaches tended not to do too much work. I understand when anyone rang to enquire about hiring one the price they were quoted was much higher than Jewitts, Shaw Brothers, Gardiners in Spennymoor or Martindale from Ferryhill, and so they spent most of their life parked in the garage. Eddy Howe also kept one of the two coaches for himself to drive, so that coach did so little it could not have recovered its capital expenditure. However Eddy Howe must have been a belts and braces man content in knowing he had plenty of busses to cover his OK service even in the event of two breakdowns which the reliable AECs never did.
Below is a rare photo of Howe’s AEC coach JPT registered about 1948 which was the coach Eddy kept for himself to drive. The photo is rare in so much it is being used on the OK service and in Bishop Auckland Market place. It was replaced by a new AEC Plaxton in 1958, and I think it was put on service for about a month before it was sold 10 year old with about 20,000 miles on the clock. Whoever bought it got a bus that was almost new by wear but it shows how quickly fashion changed in those years as the half cab in 1958 looks ancient.
Hi Carl.
I read with interest your thread on Marmaduke Street and the blocks area.When I asked my father as to why it was called Marmaduke Street he explained that together with Bryan and Gerrard these were the names of Squire Salvin’s three sons.He told me that the original plots were 90 x 90 and that it was intended that the houses down one side of the street looked onto the garden of the house opposite.My grandfather built a stable and store on the garden area of number 2 which was called Poplar Cottage though I’ll never understand why as the yard was surrounded by Sycamore trees.I look up the street now and wonder just how you managed to get a fleet of your size shoehorned into the garage or what you would have done if they hadn’t knocked South Terrace down.
I’ll close with a story about the vehicle in the advert which displayed a TIR plate. I was on one of my regular visits for a bit of crack with your dad when I noticed the plate ,as I looked at it one of your drivers asked if I knew what it was for and after I explained that it was for if the vehicle was used to go over the water.However the driver rather cruelly said in the case of this old b****r it’ll mean Towed in Regularly.
regards Barrie
Barrie Hindmarch:
Hi Carl.
I read with interest your thread on Marmaduke Street and the blocks area.When I asked my father as to why it was called Marmaduke Street he explained that together with Bryan and Gerrard these were the names of Squire Salvin’s three sons.He told me that the original plots were 90 x 90 and that it was intended that the houses down one side of the street looked onto the garden of the house opposite.My grandfather built a stable and store on the garden area of number 2 which was called Poplar Cottage though I’ll never understand why as the yard was surrounded by Sycamore trees.I look up the street now and wonder just how you managed to get a fleet of your size shoehorned into the garage or what you would have done if they hadn’t knocked South Terrace down.
I’ll close with a story about the vehicle in the advert which displayed a TIR plate. I was on one of my regular visits for a bit of crack with your dad when I noticed the plate ,as I looked at it one of your drivers asked if I knew what it was for and after I explained that it was for if the vehicle was used to go over the water.However the driver rather cruelly said in the case of this old b****r it’ll mean Towed in Regularly.
regards Barrie
Hi Barrie
Like you say they just levelled South Terrace in time. I remember on a Saturday picking van after van up from the top where the houses had stood and driving down Bryan Street, and round the corner and up Marmaduke Street, waiting for a van that had been serviced reversing out and then pulling in so that Dad and Jack Kempsey could check it over and do any repairs, then go out and drive the other van up to the top of the street and park up only to do the same with a different van about half an hour later.
Like you say how all of us managed is by today standards unbelievable, and the council had been very kind to make such a good job of levelling the area, which was an ideal size, to such a high standard.
However as I will explain in my next post after I get my memory working with the accurate facts, they did it for us, to keep the peace, and save their face.
The one fortunate thing was that not many of the residents of Marmaduke street had cars and also they had grown up in the street and had got used to you, us and Howes being there.
Carl
We looked for years for new premises in Spennymoor. There was nowhere suitable, plenty at Aycliffe Ind Est but in those days they did not allow service industries there, only manufacturing.
In reality, we never expected to make such a large site as Green Lane was, and our first thoughts were for parking and perhaps a warehouse, but never dreamt of one as large as we eventually built.
For warehousing we almost bought the old passenger train station, which would have been purely for a warehouse and limited parking, however it fell through as prospects of levelling the embankment and building the road as it is today surfaced. The next site foe warehousing was the old very large Methodist Chapel now long gone by the Arcadia.
Our next thoughts were on the corner at the bottom of Dobbies Bank, just down from where Grays built their factory. I think a day centre stands there today but for years it stood empty. Spennymoor Urban District Council turned down planning permission. With that we still would have used the garage and office in Marmaduke Street and in reality for a long time we got similar benefits from the top of the street when they demolished the houses at no cost
Then there was a site with an entrance off Whitworth Terrace, where Carters had originally used when they hired their cars and hearses for funerals. If my memory serves me right it still belonged to them and we negotiated purchasing, but again turned down for planning, which was just as well as we would have outgrown it within a year and access was totally unsuitable.
Then we bought the Excelsior Hotel At Middlestone Moor where we were granted planning as a warehouse. Joe Hall, our solicitor found the owners of all the land surrounding it, except a little strip which went right through the middle, and it took a fair time to locate the owner, but at considerable expense he eventually did and we got options to buy all, which was quite a large area. Our plans were to use the front of the excelsior as offices, and the large bar area downstairs as warehousing together with upstairs, and build onto the back workshops which were joined to the rear of the property. Although now there is a housing estate on all this area, at the time it would have tidied it up and we would have ensured it made an attractive entrance to the town. Again after months of arguing the council turned us down.
There was a chap called Marley, who was Surveyor with another called Ross as his assistant. Marley over the years had established a power base on the council that by the fifties he more or less ran the town. If you are reading this, Barrie you will remember him driving down Marmaduke Street, as I think he lived at the top of Barnfield road in his black large Citroen car. Somehow we heard he was jealous of the progress of our business and had said he wanted us out of Spennymoor and would block anyway we wished to develop. We gave evidence to Joe Hall who put into action a case for us to sue Marley for defamation of character. He made a public apology in the council chamber and shortly afterwards announced his retirement, and we were told that South Terrace was going to be demolished and made suitable for parking and we could use this area for parking for a limited time until a new site could be found.
The first site found by the council was adjacent to where Coulson’s were where Bell Bros the Mercedes Garage etc. now. At the site of the dual carriageway that was to be subsequently built. But it was a pit heap, and although they showed us details of how the site could look we couldn’t envisage the size and the land. Also dad thought it would cost a fortune to move the slag heap and be very time consuming, so we turned it down.
Then came the offer of land at Green Lane Industrial estate. It was joint owned by Durham County council and Spennymoor Urban District, and negotiations to buy were complicated and expensive, with them eventually only selling to us if they had approval of what we built, which meant we used an architect they approved of and recommended. Anyone in business will know the reason and who would benefit from that.
The first building we built was the office block and workshops and had to be built with flat roofs. In fact we almost had a massive swimming pool on the top of the workshops, with the stupidity of the two local authorities’ approved designs. But once we were in the warehouse, which was the next building erected and all future building we built with conventional roofs.
Here is a photo from inside the warehouse as it was partly built. I was standing about in the middle looking towards the far end when I took the photo, so the building was approximately twice this size.
